


The Lion Prince

by ssstrychnine



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Fairy Tales & Related Fandoms, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-01
Updated: 2013-11-01
Packaged: 2017-12-31 03:12:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1026577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssstrychnine/pseuds/ssstrychnine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Brienne comes across a lion who wasn't always a lion.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Lion Prince

“They’re not usually lions,” Brienne tells the golden cat sprawled out in front of Winterfell’s wishing pond. “They’re frogs mostly. I suppose you’ll be looking for Sansa.”

The lion looks at her with eyes that are definitely not that of a lion. Though somewhat feline, they are brilliant green and irritated in a _very_ human way. He’s not a young lion either, which confuses Brienne a little. They’re usually young, the frogs and then the princes, but this lion has a mane, and his face and body have scars and marks like he’s _lived_. None of the frogs were marked at all, fresh green and bright-eyed and new-born slick like wild animals couldn’t possibly be.

“Sansa’s the usurper’s daughter?” the lion says, his voice full of the arrogance and impatience that definitely _is_ present in all the rest.

“Sansa’s the _princess_ ,” Brienne mutters darkly. “And if you’re wanting a _kiss_ from her, you’ll speak of her with respect. I’ve never had to hurt any of the _frogs_.”

The lion watches her, his eyes narrowed. He shakes his head, he digs his claws deep into the hard, grassy earth surrounding the pool, a growl starts low in the back of his throat. Brienne doesn’t _want_ to have to fight a lion and she especially doesn’t want to have to fight an enormous lion- _man_ with battle scars like he’s been fighting forever and with teeth like needles and claws to match. She’s wearing a dress for one thing, and all she has for a weapon is the jewelled hairpin Sansa gave her for her nineteenth birthday, savagely pointed at one end and delicately beautiful at the other, a gift that both fits Brienne to a tee and is so completely out of place in her straw-like hair that it’s laughable. She doesn’t _want_ to fight a lion, but she will, for Sansa.

But the lion stops growling and flops heavily onto the ground, claws retracted, mouth closed, eyes dimmed.

“When will the _princess_ be available,” he asks, sounding sullen and unimpressed, and it’s so strange coming from a lion’s mouth that Brienne almost laughs.

“She will come down presently.”

“And she’ll kiss me.”

“And she’ll kiss you, and you can trot off back to wherever you came from.”

“Fantastic,” the lion says, and Brienne isn't quite sure if it’s just because he’s a lion that the words comes out sounding so predatorily.

When Brienne was ten years old she was sent to Winterfell. Her father had decided she needed friends who were girls and not scrappy farm hands and servants’ sons, and Eddard Stark had decided his daughter needed friends who were skilled at more than just embroidery and gossip, which really Brienne didn't think she was, but apparently her reputation as someone far too young and female to be _that_ good with a sword had preceded her.

Brienne assumed that being a princess would only make Sansa even more unbearable to be around than the daughters of high born ladies she had already encountered on Tarth. That Sansa would call her ugly and laugh at her height and her clumsy stitches and her hair that wouldn't curl, and they would be enemies at first sight despite their fathers’ efforts. But Sansa was a surprise. She took to Brienne immediately and became a rough and ready partner in play, just as willing to be the knight as the lady, and politely interested in even the most disagreeable of Brienne’s hobbies. They dreamt away their days together, they created worlds and imagined futures, and when Sansa was thirteen and Brienne fifteen Eddard Stark was killed by the Lannister boy-king, Robb Stark declared himself King in the North, and the frogs started to appear.

“I’m a Princess now,” Sansa had explained patiently. “They need kisses to turn back into people.”

It seemed so obvious when she said it like that. Something out of their stories, true love to be found. Except that the frogs usually already had true loves and just needed to borrow Sansa, and none of them decided at the last minute that really _she_ was their true love after all and stayed. Not that Sansa wanted that really, she wasn’t even old enough, and she’d just lost her father, and she didn’t think she’d like to have anything to do with anyone who’d gotten himself cursed at such a young age.

 The lion was different. It _glowered_ at the pond, it kneaded the grass with its claws, it decided as soon as Sansa arrived that _she_ was wrong.

“This won’t work,” he declares, and Sansa sniffs, offended.

“This is how it has always worked,” she says primly. “But if you don’t want a kiss, I won’t give you one.”

“It’s not the kiss that’s wrong, it’s _you_.”

“Brienne, please escort the lion...away.”

“A girl with royalty, sapphires and swords,” the Lion says, a child reciting a poem. “A girl with oceans and islands and words. I thought it meant you...Tully blue royalty.”

“That is a terribly written curse,” Sansa sighs. “And it’s certainly not me. It _could_ be Brienne, though.”

And Brienne freezes, and the lion’s eyes narrow, and the air around the pond is silent and still and uncertain.

“ _Explain_ ,” Brienne says, her voice dangerously careful in pronunciation.

“Your royalty is me, the sapphires are Tarth and your eyes. Swords is obvious. Oceans and islands are Tarth again. Words, I don’t know, maybe you’ve a gift for poetry you haven’t told me about.”

“My _eyes_ ,” Brienne mutters irritably. “And no, I’ve no talent for words, so I don’t fit.”

“You’ve a talent for using words to make me feel...less than human,” the lion says, and if ever a lion could grin, he is doing it.

“I’ve barely spoken to you,” Brienne snorts. “Find a different girl to kiss you and save you.”

“No,” the Lion gets to his feet. “I’ve decided your princess is right, it’s you who ought to kiss me. Why are swords obvious?”

“ _What_?”

“Oh, Brienne is better with a sword than any of the boys,” Sansa says happily. “Go on Brienne, kiss him, he’s nothing but a lion with a thorn in his paw.”

“And I’m the mouse, I suppose,” Brienne says gloomily.

“No, you’re something better and tougher.”

“We’ll see,” the Lion is looking at her with eyes like lamplight, and Brienne kind of wants to take the hairpin from her hair and _put_ a thorn in his paw. “Now give me my kiss.”

“No kiss from me is _yours_ ,” she spits back. “And you’ll ask me civilly or you’ll get nothing.”

“My lady, might you grace my unworthy brow with a kiss from your heavenly lips?”

Brienne clenches her fists, takes a step back, shaking her head.

“No, I don’t - “

“Please.”  His voice rings sincere with that word, vulnerable and tired and afraid she will say no.

Brienne steps forward with a sigh. She gathers her skirts in her hands and crouches, bringing herself eye level with a lion that’s all teeth and claws and eyes like wildfire. _He watches me like she is prey_ , she thinks, _but like_ _he is_ _a kicked puppy too_. She wants to soothe his fear, she realises, and she wrinkles her nose and passes it off as a natural inclination to be kind to animals. She kisses the soft, velvety fur between his eyes, and the lion laughs low and snaps at the air in front of her face, and she startles and falls back, and when she opens her eyes again he is a man.

Both she and Sansa recognise him immediately. Before Sansa can issue a sharp-voiced warning, Brienne has her hairpin at his throat. He is just as golden as a man as he was as a lion. Just as arrogant and beautiful and dangerous and worn. Just as terrible and hated and feared and _evil_. He is also entirely unclothed, and Brienne is blushing even with a weapon pointed at him.

“Jaime Lannister,” Sansa declares, her voice thick with scorn. “You were a fool to come here.”

“I’m a fool about a lot of things.” He cocks his head to one side, his hair is a fall of gold. “But at least I am now a human fool, thanks to your...sworn sword.”

“I’m not that,” Brienne snaps. “On your feet, Lannister.”

He is judged by Sansa’s brother and mother and thrown in the dungeons, prisoner of a war that has been fought for as long as anyone can remember. He is given clothing and food and a straw bed, and he complains loudly about all of it and invokes his name at every opportunity. _A Lannister always pays his debts_ , he threatens. Brienne dreams about the sincerity she had heard in his voice and the look in his eyes before she had kissed him, and she doesn’t tell Sansa about it because it couldn’t _possibly_ be true. Jaime Lannister is a monster. Jaime Lannister _belong_ _s_ in a dungeon. A lion in a cage.

He’s been there a month before she visits him. It’s not that she’s _worked_ _up the courage_ , it’s more that her dreams are incessant and pervasive, and she wants to prove them wrong. When the guards give her the keys to his cell, she tucks them in the pocket of her dress and looks at him through the bars. He doesn’t look so golden after a month in a dungeon, even one that’s warm and dry and relatively comfortable. His hair is lank and hangs across his forehead, heavy with dirt and sweat, and his skin is grey. He blinks at her, and she _stares_ at him.

“My saviour,” he murmurs, getting to his feet, draping his hands through the bars.

“Lannister,” she croaks, her voice leaden and stiff.

“Have you come to execute me? I’m told you’re good with a sword.”

“No I’m...” she pauses, frowns. “I don’t know why I’m here.”

“Perhaps you’re here for another kiss?” he grins. “I’m better at it as a man.”

“Definitely not.” She steps back from the bars, clasps her hands behind her back. “You belong here; you've done terrible things.”

“I have,” he acknowledges, resting his head against the bars. “And I've done good things.”

“You killed the king.”

“I killed _a_ king. They’re dropping like flies these days.”

“He was an old man.”

“He was. Old and mad and dangerous,” he sighs. “You’re Brienne, yes? You’re from Tarth.”

“Yes.”

“Stark loyalists have never been fond of Lannisters, even before we were at war.”

“You could have any name and still be a monster.”

Jaime smiles.

“We both know that’s not true.”

 Brienne flees because she doesn't know what to do with his smile, how to turn it into something she can understand. There’s still a lion in that smile, something wild and angry. She thinks he could rip her to pieces if he wanted to. She gives the keys back to the gaoler and goes to find Sansa, they’d planned on going for an afternoon ride.

Brienne doesn't visit him every day but she finds the time to do it, mere minutes between sword practice and Sansa. At first he mostly spits insults and smirks at her, he requests kisses every time like he thinks a second kiss from her will spring him from his cage. Then he starts to tell her things that seem different. Parts of his life before he was cursed. Years ago, it seems, he’d tried a thousand kisses before hers had worked and he hasn’t quite shaken it off yet. He yawns wider than anything, and he’s unsteady on his feet, and he sleeps for longer than any person should, and he shakes his hair out like it’s still a mane. _Years ago_ , Brienne thinks, watching as he paces out the cell’s perimeter. _He hasn’t quite remembered how to be human_.

“It was my sister who cursed me,” he tells her after almost six months of this.

“Queen Cersei,” Brienne whispers.

“She isn't that good with magic, I’m sure she didn't think it would work. She wanted me to realise she was the only person I had. She tried to come up with an impossible curse, an impossible girl to find. It sounded vague enough that I thought it could be anyone, but it was only you, the impossible girl.”

Brienne’s cheeks heat with his words and she shakes her head.

“I just fit the words, it doesn't mean anything. Your sister was cruel to do that to you.”

“Cruel is putting it kindly,” Jaime smiles, a ghostly expression in the shadows of his cage.

And then he tells her something that makes Brienne ache, makes her want to take the keys from her pocket, twist the lock, let him loose to start again.

“I don’t want to be a Lannister.”

Brienne stays silent, fiddles with the key, digs the cold metal into her thumb.

“My father wants power, he wants to rule the world, and my sister wants to _be_ him , and I don’t want any of that. My brother is stuck, caught by loyalty he doesn’t owe them.” He smiles, like he always does when he’s talking about the worst parts of his life. “I’m weaker than Tyrion, my family bonds aren’t so strong.”

“You can talk to the King; if you tell him this he will understand.”

“He’ll keep me locked up all the same,” Jaime shrugs. “Your Lord is an honourable man before he is a good one.”

“My Lord is...” Brienne frowns. She barely interacts with Robb, she can’t be sure of any answer she gives. “He would hear you out.”

Jaime shrugs again, sits down cross-legged by the door. Brienne mimics his movement. Not for the first time she think that she could reach out, touch him through the bars, but she doesn’t, of course. She keeps her hands clasped firmly in her lap and she smiles at him instead, wanting to give him some form of comfort nonetheless.

“He won’t keep you in here forever.”

And it’s him who reaches forward to touch her, just briefly, a brush of fingers at her wrist that startles a laugh from her before she staggers to her feet, stalks away from his laughter and the way his skin felt on hers.

Jaime has been in the dungeon for almost a year when Sansa is kidnapped. Brienne is supposed to be out riding with her but is with Jaime instead, and when she finds out it is twilight and the princess has been missing for several hours. A ransom demand is delivered the next day, Sansa for Jaime, and in the night she goes to him again, sick with guilt and brittle with determination.

“You’ll be going home soon,” she tells him, her voice a whipcrack because this is _his_ fault. For keeping her distracted, for existing at all, but especially for being a _Lannister_. “Robb will make the swap.”

“My family doesn't have Sansa.” Jaime gets to his feet, scrubbing the sleep from his eyes. “Casterly Rock is a hundred miles away.”

“They have her somewhere,” Brienne scowls. “It doesn't matter where, your family is  responsible. You’ll be going back tomorrow.”

Jaime sags against the bars like his strings have been cut.

“I should not have gone searching for a way out of this curse,” he mumbles. “Of course it would take me back _there_ eventually.”

“You would rather be a beast than...”

“Than a Lannister,” he laughs. "Not quite. I would rather be nothing, someone new.”

“There is nowhere you can think of that they might be holding Sansa?”

“There is...” Jaime frowns. “There is one place.”

Brienne tugs the keys from her dress.

“Take me there.”

She fumbles briefly with the lock, ignores the startled look Jaime gives her and his gasp as the door swings open. She moves fast because she knows she will otherwise lose her nerve. Fear for Sansa keeps her going, it is greater than fear of treason and fear of being betrayed by Jaime Lannister. She stands in front of the open door, and Jaime stares at her, and there’s a moment where she thinks he’s going to kiss her, and then she thinks he’s going to kill her but he does neither, just steps out next to her. She hands him the spare cloak she brought with her, knowing what she was going to do long before she really acknowledged it. He slings it around his shoulders, and he looks at her for instruction, and she scowls at him because she doesn’t know what else to do, and stumbles toward the exit.

They keep to the shadows, they avoid the guards, and Jaime keeps his hood up. At one point he pushes her into a shadowy corner to avoid someone, and her heart freezes for a moment as his knuckles graze her neck, and she wonders if she will always be a little bit afraid of Jaime, even when his touch is so gentle. They take horses from the stables and they ride fast through the night, Jaime in the lead, even as uncertain on a horse as he is. _He could leave_ , Brienne thinks over and over. _He could ride off into the dark_ _,_ _and I will be beheaded for ai_ _ding a hostage_ _,_ _and Sansa will be killed if we don’t have Jaime_. Her hands are stiff with fear on the reins.

He takes her deep into the forest, off the path, somewhere Brienne has never been. A dark and twisted part of the woods, the sort of place that cursed things go when they can’t find their kisses. They stop in the heart of it, hitch their horses to a tree. Brienne draws her sword, she gives him her hairpin, and he smiles at that. _This is a trap_ , she thinks, but she buries the thought  and grips her sword tighter.

Jaime kills the first man they come across, cuts the pin across his throat and wipes his bloody hands on the Lannister uniform the man wears. Brienne has never been this close to death, even if she practices at sword swinging. She’s never accidentally killed a man in a tourney, she’s never seen that much blood. She knows _how_ to kill, but it is different to see it. When she buries her sword in the next man they see, she feels her stomach drop as he drops, and she almost falls. But Jaime catches her, bolsters her with the grim look in his eyes, and keeps them going.

They fight off two more, and Jaime comes alive with a weapon in his hand. Brienne hasn’t seen him like that before, blood in his grin and in his eyes and dripping from his fingers. He looks like he’s come home with a weapon in his hand. He looks like Brienne feels with a weapon in herhand. She doesn’t think she’ll ever get used to killing, but she can’t deny the song of a sword or the way it feels when steel hits steel. She imagines fighting him, when her hands are less shaky, less like _paws_ , when he’s practiced and ready. If this treason remains unpunished. If they ever see one another again when Sansa is rescued, warm and dry.

She is being held underground, there is a door hidden in a hollow tree, immense and old with a lion carved in its trunk. _The_ _Starks_ _will burn this tree to ashes_ , Brienne thinks as they step down into darkness. Sansa is dishevelled and dirty, but unhurt. She sees Brienne, and her face falls like the end of the world, and her eyes get wild, and her fists clench. She attacks Jaime first, throws herself at him, gives him a black eye with a glancing blow. Brienne pulls her off him, and Sansa  falls limp, spins on her heel, glares at her friend with tears in her eyes and a trembling mouth.

“I knew you were hiding something from me,” she whispers.

“We killed them,” Brienne insists. “ _Jaime killed them_.”

Sansa looks back to Jaime, her eyes travel over him, taking in everything, his prisoner’s clothing stained with blood, Brienne’s hairpin turned red in his hand.

“They were going to swap him for you but...but he knew where you would be. He brought me to you. He doesn’t want anything to do with his family.”

“I suppose you have a hundred men outside, waiting to kill Brienne and take me back,” Sansa says boldly, staring at Jaime with unmasked hostility. “I suppose you tricked her into this and you’re feeling so _smug_ about it right now.”

“Brienne isn't so easy to trick,” Jaime says quietly. “And she’s not as stupid as that.”

Sansa blushes angrily, kicks dirt at him, turns back to Brienne.

“He doesn't know you better than I do,” she snaps.

“No,” Brienne shakes her head. “No, never. Sansa, he is trying to help.”

“So help.” Sansa glares at Jaime. “Take me home.”

Sansa rides behind Brienne on the way back. Her hands are tight around Brienne’s waist, and Brienne pretends it’s a gesture of friendship, something to tell her this will end alright, instead of the barely controlled anger she knows it really is.

Dawn is breaking by the time they reach Winterfell. They go straight to the King, and Catelyn Stark clings to her daughter and _stares_ at Jaime, and with a gesture from Robb he is being held in place by castle guards. Jaime doesn’t fight, just drops Brienne’s pin to the floor, keeps his hands spread wide and his eyes lowered. Brienne moves to stand near Jaime, and the Starks watch her now too, and she doesn’t know how any of this happened, not really, how she came to stand for a Lannister instead of a Stark. She kissed a cursed lion and everything changed.

“He shouldn't die,” she says, and her voice doesn’t waver even as her hands tremble. “He saved Sansa.”

“Brienne has sworn to me that Jaime Lannister is a Lannister only in name,” Sansa says with a certainty Brienne is sure she doesn't feel. “I have accepted her oath.”

 _Sansa is seventeen_ , Brienne thinks. Seventeen and stood as straight and proud as her mother. Sansa could be a _Queen_ at seventeen.

“I...I can take responsibility for him,” Brienne stammers. “He is not what he was.”

“I can take responsibility for myself,” Jaime corrects. “But Brienne is right. I have no hatred for your family and no love for my own. Should I have any say in the matter, I would prefer to remain here. I will...I will fight for the wolf if it is asked of me.”

Robb Stark is silent for a long time. Next to him, Catelyn’s eyes are narrowed, her expression a twist of disbelief. But she glances at Brienne too, and something in her softens, and she touches her son’s arm, speaks to him quietly.

“You are backed by my daughter and by the daughter of my bannerman,” Robb starts, looking at Sansa and Brienne in turn. “Your future here and the Lady Brienne’s shall be linked. Should you turn back to Lannister treachery, yours will not be the only head I take.”

Sansa protests, and Catelyn bows her head, and Jaime is let go. He picks up Brienne’s hairpin, hands it to her, holds her eyes with his, clearer and brighter than she’s ever seen them outside of a dungeon’s dimness. This will be alright because Jaime will stay, this will all _work_. Robb leaves a moment later, and the muttering crowd disperses, and Jaime, Brienne and Sansa are left alone.

“You should have told me you were in love with him,” Sansa says quietly, the hurt in her eyes making Brienne want to fall to her knees and beg forgiveness.

“I’m not,” she says automatically, not really knowing if she’s telling the truth, not looking at Jaime who is watching her closely. “He is a good man, he did not deserve to die.”

“You still should have told me.”

Sansa leaves without waiting for a response, and Brienne knows it will take a lot to repair this  friendship. Her only friend. Almost ten years as companions, almost ten years inseparable. She sighs.

“You will fix it,” Jaime says. “You’re good at fixing things.”

“I’m not, I only try to do what is right.”

“It’s much harder than the alternative.”

She takes him to her quarters,  several rooms given to her by the Starks as she grew older. He tries to follow her into her bedchamber but she stops him, a gentle palm against his chest, the first time she’s intentionally touched him since he was a lion.

“You can sleep in the other room,” she tells him. “Tomorrow you’ll find some way you can be useful, some way to earn money, somewhere to live.”

“I think I’ll go back to being a Lannister after all,” he grins.

She smiles at him, sways a little, curls her fingers into the worn fabric of his shirt and he takes her hand and kisses it, her fingers and her palm and her wrist, and her smile widens and so does his, and he lets go of her, and she huffs out a little sound of disappointment.

“Good night, Brienne,” he murmurs.

“Good night, Jaime.”

She closes the door behind him, leans against it heavily, covers her face with her hands, kisses the spots that he kissed, laughs at how ridiculous it all is, and goes to bed. She dreams of lions and of frogs, and of Sansa as a little girl and as a queen. The curses are nothing, aren’t important, it is what happens afterwards that changes you. Men become lions who become men again but keep the wildness. Princes become frogs and take kisses from girls who mean nothing to them. Impossible curses are written and proven to be possible just like wolves and lions can be more than just wolves and lions. And as stuck in the middle as Brienne always finds herself, she doesn’t think she minds. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to Miss M and YellowDelaney for beta-reading for me and fixing my numerous mistakes (especially to YellowDelaney because all of her help was cruelly deleted by evil Word but she still managed to help me out significantly!)


End file.
